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PERFORMANCE OF FILESYSTEMS COMPARED (includes REISER4 and EXT4).

RESULT: With compression, REISER4, absolutely SMASHED the other filesystems.

No other filesystem came close (not even remotely close).

Using REISER4 (gzip), rather than EXT2/3/4, saves you a truly amazing 816 - 213 = 603 MB (a 74% saving in disk space), and this, with little, or no, loss of performance when storing 655 MB of raw data. In fact, substantial performance increases were achieved in the bonnie++ benchmarks.

Disk Usage: The amount of disk used to store the data.Copy 655MB (1): Time taken to copy the data over a partition boundary.Copy 655MB (2): Time taken to copy the data within a partition.Tar Gzip 655MB: Time taken to Tar and Gzip the data.Unzip UnTar 655MB: Time taken to UnGzip and UnTar the data.Del 2.5 Gig: Time taken to Delete everything just written (about 2.5 Gig).

Each test was preformed 5 times and the average value recorded.

To get a feel for the performance increases that can be achieved by using compression, we look at the total time (in seconds) to run the test:

The top two results use Reiser4 with compression. Since bonnie++ writes test files which are almost all zeros, compression speeds things up dramatically. That this is not the case in real world examples can be seen in the first test above where compression often does not speed things up. However, more importantly, it does not slow things down much, either.

RESULT: With compression, REISER4, absolutely SMASHED the other filesystems.

I've been using Reiser4 since it first hit -mm series. While it really IS
very fast (no FS untars a kernel tarball faster), it has two major flaws:
1. it maintains too large in-memory caches. When it decides to write its
huge caches back to disk, my system gets unresponsive for ~5secs (even
mouse cursor freezes sometimes).
EDIT: this is also a problem with sudden power loss. I lost *LOTS* of files
on reiser4 partitions this way.

2. it does not reserve a tiny amount of diskspace for "emergency" use when
the disk gets full. This is especially annoying if you use it as rootfs:
disk gets full and you can't launch any apps (not even rm!, heck I can't
even shut the machine down properly).

I've been using Reiser4 since it first hit -mm series. While it really IS
very fast (no FS untars a kernel tarball faster), it has two major flaws:
1. it maintains too large in-memory caches. When it decides to write its
huge caches back to disk, my system gets unresponsive for ~5secs (even
mouse cursor freezes sometimes).
EDIT: this is also a problem with sudden power loss. I lost *LOTS* of files
on reiser4 partitions this way.

2. it does not reserve a tiny amount of diskspace for "emergency" use when
the disk gets full. This is especially annoying if you use it as rootfs:
disk gets full and you can't launch any apps (not even rm!, heck I can't
even shut the machine down properly).

the first problem is a really trouble for me. it freezes from time to time not only for 5 seconds, but 5+ mins, or even 30 mins! the cursor still moves, but firefox would freeze. as far as I'm aware of, there's no fix yet. user may specify smaller cache, but it doesn't really improve the freezes, just slows the fs down

the first problem is a really trouble for me. it freezes from time to time not only for 5 seconds, but 5+ mins, or even 30 mins! the cursor still moves, but firefox would freeze. as far as I'm aware of, there's no fix yet. user may specify smaller cache, but it doesn't really improve the freezes, just slows the fs down

It may be wise to report this to the ReiserFS development mailing list.

In any case, the benchmarks posted by the OP are somewhat old. A new set of benchmarks is needed. Unfortunately, development has been slow and I don't see reiser4 making big progress as long as there are only a couple of devs that can work on it part-time.

Come on, why do you always have to link to this damn nazi website? A website where things like "Jews are evil people" are stated. This is all so ridiculous

lol
Some opinions are extreme and maybe hateful, although the point of view is definitely interesting (The sabotage part). In case it really is a big conspiracy, it would then be more obvious who the culprit would be when Namesys gets bought out by it once the value of the company hits rock bottom.

I'd be interested to have reiser4 in my kernel to test it with unimportant data on a seperate drive. I could live with HDD performance going through the roof, even if it doesn't conform with kernel development standards.